Oct 31, 2014

Our Stewardship
Education Series this year is titled “Rethink:
Generosity.” We are now approaching our Loyalty Sunday in which we make an
estimate of what we will give the church to do ministry in 2015.

A difficult
task is easier done when we know that we are not alone in the struggle. It is
easy to give up if is just me, but there is a synergistic flow of energy when
it is us.

There was a
man in a community who owned a little saw mill. He had one log truck with which
he hauled in raw logs. One rainy day he was coming in over the graveled road
with a heavy load. The truck slipped in the ditch. He walked a mile up the road
to a house and asked the farmer if he would bring his tractor and pull his log
truck out of the ditch.

The man said
he did not have a tractor, but he had a mule, old Blue. The owner of the log
truck said he doubted that a mule could do the job. The farmer said: “You don’t
know my mule, Blue.” So, they brought old Blue to the log truck and hitched him
to it. The man cracked his whip and said, “Come on Blue.” Blue pulled but the
truck did not move. He cracked his whip again and said, “Come on Mac.”

The truck
moved just an inch or two. He cracked his whip again and said, “Come on Maude,”
and the truck came right out of the ditch. The log truck owner thanked the
farmer, but asked him: “Why did you call that mule by three different names?”

“Well,” said
the farmer, “you have to understand that Blue is blind and if he thought he was
the only one pulling, your truck would still be in the ditch.”

When we think
of the family, city, state, and nation as “ours,” and we all pull together, we
can solve almost any problem.What if we
included in “our” church God and Christ? What if we pulled our weight as if
others depended on us?

Oct 29, 2014

Our
Stewardship Education Series this year is titled “Rethink: Generosity.” Here is a story to remind us of who we
worship and to whom we belong.

A man went out
hunting alone. He had the good fortune of killing an elephant, but no matter
how he tried he could not bring the elephant back home. He hurried back to the
village and appealed to his fellow villagers to help him bring his elephant
home. They asked: “Whose elephant is it?” The man said with pride: “It is
mine.” The people refused to help him. He went back to his kill and tried to
devise some way of moving the elephant alone, but could not. After reflecting
on his problem he went back to the village and repeated his appeal for help.
The people asked: “Whose elephant is it?” He said: “It is ours!” The whole
village came to his aid at once.

Ownership is
essential to cooperation in almost any enterprise. Shared ownership is an
essential factor to the health of any institution. It is not my marriage, but
ours. They are not my children, but ours. The church does not belong to the
pastor. It always bothered me to hear someone refer to “Rev. So and So’s
church.” The city does not belong to the mayor. The state does not belong to
the governor, or the country to the president. A sense of shared ownership is
essential to true democracy in any institution.

Oct 23, 2014

For years, the
opening of The Wide World of Sports
television program showed “the agony of defeat” of a painful ending to an
attempted ski jump. The skier appeared in good form as he headed down the jump,
but then, for no apparent reason, he tumbled head over heels off the side of
the jump, bouncing off the supporting structure.

What viewers
didn’t know was that he chose to fall rather than finish the jump. Why? As he
explained later, the jump surface had become too fast, and midway down, he
realized if he completed the jump, he would land on the level ground, beyond
the safe landing area, which could have been fatal.

As it was, the
skier suffered no more than a headache from the tumble.

To change
one’s course in life can be a dramatic and sometimes painful undertaking, but
change is better than a fatal landing at the end.